Gorgeous, Sensual Sexuality in Artistic Film and Photography

Sex as Jamming

I love an astute observation and a good analogy when it comes to sex, and this video is rife with both of them. Also, as someone musically inclined, it’s right up my alley. This lovely and charming video by Canadian sex educator Karen B. K. Chang is an excellent way of understanding sex… as a musical jam.

It’s drawn/mixed media stop motion video created for the SexEd Project. I think it’s really brilliant. It preaches knowing yourself and practicing with yourself and others, collaboration, understanding sex as a process, communication, presence, an end to sexual shame, consent… Every single comparison is perfect and are the types of things I had never thought about concretely before.

Probably the most interesting statement from this is that pleasure is a renewable resource, which is true of both sex and music… And what a nice thought! It’s something we can create together or alone that has no limit. I hope this is an uplifting thought for you, and I’d love to hear if you have any prolongations for this particular analogy… Let’s jam on the motif and see what comes up!

I love the “renewable resource” idea. Not just renewable as in “it will be there again tomorrow,” but also as in “it will renew you FOR tomorrow.”

As a longtime musician, I’ve participated in a ton of musical partnerships. Some of them were jazz-based jam sessions, which were exactly what Karen Chang described: sweaty, spontaneous, surprising riffs on familiar themes, new improvisations on old melodies or chord changes. In these instances, hitting a “wrong” note can actually be a good thing, because it makes you listen to the other performers twice as hard. Some of my musical relationships were classical duets: carefully studied, delicate performances filled with nuance and grace. These were based on years of careful study, appreciation, and understanding of my instrument, music, and partner. And some of them were full-blown orchestras or marching bands: performances where I was just a tiny part of a huge event, a little voice on a big blog.

No matter what kind of music you make, it’s always being made for someone else to enjoy (even if that someone else is you). Being a musician means you’re never too old or too good to stop practicing, and there will always be new songs to learn and new ways to play them— da capo al coda!

Excellent! Thanks for sharing this with us. I’ve sent this to my kids and several other folks; it’ll be interesting to see how they take it.

The musical analogy is particularly apropos, but I wonder how many non-musicians will get it. Then again, the saying about lovers “making beautiful music together” has been around for a long time, and hasn’t been limited to musicians.

One of my greatest frustrations as a musician has been how bad I am at jamming, or any improvisation for that matter. This little video makes me think about how jamming plays on my life in general.